Monster Hunter Alpha-ARC

  “What’s that for?”

  “You want me to trust you? Well, after the things you’ve done, you’ve got to earn my trust.” Earl pulled one cartridge’s rim free of the sheet-metal moon clip and studied it. Apparently satisfied with the round of ammunition, Earl dropped it into the cylinder and gave it a hard spin before closing it. “You say your life’s worth nothing and that you’re willing to follow the old ways. Well”—Earl tossed the gun in a long arc across the room—“prove it.”

  By the time the revolver landed at Nikolai’s feet, Earl had already lifted his Thompson to cover him. “Really? Russian roulette?”

  “Appropriate, don’t you think?” Earl gestured with his subgun. “Pick it up.…And you so much as twitch in my direction, I’ll cut you in half with silver bullets. You’re fast, but you ain’t that fast.”

  Nikolai slowly lifted the Smith & Wesson. His expression was blank.

  “Put it against your temple.”

  Hand quivering, Nikolai did as he was told. It took him a long time to respond. “The Tvar is not happy with this development.”

  “Your ta-var is a whiny little bitch. Tell him the king of werewolves says to quit his crying. This is how its gonna work. I’ll ask a question. Each time you answer wrong, you pull the trigger.”

  “I hope this is a short quiz.”

  Chapter 21

  Sharon was the first to speak to me. We’d been working together long enough that she knew me well. She approached me one day while I sat, exhausted, unshaven, and haggard, smoking and glaring at the jungle. Even my human hours were spent filled with anger. Conover’s superiors had been pushing him, so he’d been pushing us. She told me that she was worried about me.

  “I’m just doing my job,” I told her.

  “You’re changing, Earl. There is a darkness growing. I can feel it in you.”

  It took everything I had not to lash out at her. She was right. I was having a hard time staying in control. “Don’t read my mind. You really won’t like what you find.”

  She had a lovely laugh. “That’s not how it works, but I don’t need magic to understand the emotions I can read right off your face. You are not him. He is not a reflection of you. Nikolai is a monster.”

  “Look around you. So are we,” I snapped. She put a gentle hand on my shoulder. It was like all of a sudden my cares were less. Happy memories filled my head. Sirens have powerful magic. “Sorry. You’re not. You’re a decent girl with questionable parentage. Travis ain’t a monster, either. Scariest damn thing you’ve ever seen, but he’s basically a big hyperactive teenager.…But me, I’m something awful.”

  “You do what you have to. You don’t enjoy it like Nikolai does. We’ve all seen what he leaves behind. You’re starting to think that you two are the same.”

  “Not anymore. We are the same. Killing…It’s all I want to do. It’s all I can think about.”

  Sharon then asked something that has stuck with me ever since. “Why does it mean so much to be human when you’re not?”

  I didn’t have an answer.

  “Oh, Earl. Just think about it. You’re far more human than most humans I know. You have to make a choice. You have to try. Let me help you,” she offered. “I can soothe you. I can quiet the monster inside.”

  I laughed at her. “You coming on to me?”

  Sharon blanched. “Ugh, no. Really, no offense, but I’m descended from Achelous. My nearly immortal mother fell for my father because he was the most perfect man she’d seen in hundreds of years. Once I get out from under this PUFF thing, I’ll probably go be a model or marry somebody stupidly rich. I’m really, really, really out of your league. If I turn on the charm, men would commit suicide to be with me. You’re kind of…plain. And, well, frankly you’re very average. And you’re not very tall. Your accent is horrid, too.”

  “Wow. Don’t hold back, honey.”

  “And it would be like kissing an ashtray. No, Earl, what I meant was that I can calm you with my magic. I can help you find your focus again. Let me use my voice.”

  And she did. Let me tell you, there’s a reason mariners drowned themselves trying to reach a siren.

  It turns out that there really is something to that old adage about music soothing the savage beast. Santiago taught me that as well. There are different tools for different times, but the Lord always provides a way for man to control the beast inside. Sometimes, the only way left may be death, but even that is acceptable to the alternative.

  * * *

  Get up! Get up and fight!

  Despite the screams of desperation and the muzzle of the big American revolver pressed against his head, Nikolai was strangely calm. The Tvar was helpless. The voice was fainter, and he knew it would stay that way until the moon pushed it to the top. In the meantime, Nikolai was in control. It had no choice but to obey. It would fight, but now it was nothing more than a petulant child.

  He’s not even a werewolf anymore. Harbinger is a pathetic human! He’s food. Food can’t lead.

  Stalin had only been human, too.

  Silence.

  The Tvar had no response to that. Nikolai smiled inside. After being captured by the NKVD Hunters, he’d declared his loyalty to the Soviet Union. It was strong. It had beat them, and therefore it had become his Alpha, and the Motherland, his pack. Instinct had been satisfied, and Nikolai had functioned well that way for a long time. Nikolai craved order. Despite its protests, the Tvar needed structure. Having someone else make the decisions for them gave them both purpose. It was only when they were on their own that they struggled to see who was in charge.

  We always made a very good soldier. Nikolai was not sure which of them had thought that.

  Harbinger was a man of convictions. There was no doubt that if Nikolai failed this test he would die. Death was a frightening prospect, as werewolves desired survival above all, but Nikolai was a man of his word, and he knew that Harbinger, despite his ruthlessness, was not without mercy. He’d thought of that as weakness before, but now he needed that mercy. They would prove themselves, then he would avenge Lila, and the Tvar’s fury would be quenched in the blood of Harbinger’s enemies.

  “First question, did you kill Van Huong?”

  Nikolai did not know that name. “Who?”

  “Wrong answer,” Harbinger stated. “Pull the trigger.”

  When not fighting for control, his human mind was extremely analytical under stress. One in six. A seventeen percent chance. It was a reasonable sacrifice to make for peace.

  CLICK

  The hammer fell on an empty chamber. He slowly exhaled. His finger creeped forward, and the trigger reset.

  “Van was my translator. Disappeared during your attack, was listed as MIA. Ringing any bells?”

  Nikolai remembered now. They’d put together an extensive dossier on all of Special Task Force Unicorn, supernatural and normal, before the assault. “Yes. I did. I killed him myself.”

  Harbinger’s eyes hardened behind the iron sights of the old Thompson. “He was a good kid.”

  “If it is any consolation, I snuck up on him and snapped his neck. It was quick. He never felt a thing.”

  “Neither will you. Wrong answer. Pull the trigger.”

  “But that wasn’t even a question—”

  “Pull the trigger!” Harbinger bellowed.

  Two of six. Thirty-three percent. Or to look at it another way, one of five remaining chambers was loaded. Twenty percent. Nikolai held his breath.

  “Pull the trigger,” Harbinger ordered. “Or I will.”

  He could hear the cylinder rotate. CLICK.

  Harbinger sounded grudgingly impressed. “Who betrayed us? How did you find the task force?”

  It wasn’t like it was a state secret any longer. “We brought in a Kazakh orc tracker. All orcs have a specialty, and nothing could elude this one. It took him some time to acclimatize to the terrain, but once he did, he led us right to you. ”

  “Orcs sure can be talented. I inherited a
bunch of Uzbeks. Good folks.”

  “You still gave us quite the chase.”

  “That we did.” Harbinger’s lips turned up slightly, in a semblance of a smile. “It was a hell of a fight.”

  “Admit it, you enjoyed the challenge.”

  “A bit.” Harbinger chuckled, then he grew deadly serious. “Oh, and by the way…wrong answer.”

  Third of six. Fifty percent. Even odds of death; flip a coin. Or one live round in the remaining four chambers. Only a twenty-five percent chance.

  That is not helping.

  Nikolai’s voice cracked a bit. It made him ashamed. “I am beginning to believe there are no right answers in this test of yours.”

  Harbinger shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Enough of this. This is madness. Turn it on him! Kill Harbinger! Kill them all—

  CLICK.

  He was shaking badly. His mouth was dry. His stomach ached with nervous acid. Going back was not an option. Only Harbinger or the other Alpha could defeat them, and the other Alpha had murdered Lila. Masterless, he was nothing but an animal. Death was preferable to failure. Nikolai forced himself to speak. “Next?”

  The nub of Harbinger’s cigarette dangled from his lip, forgotten. “Impressive. I want you to know that. You may be an evil man, Nikolai, but you’re an impressive man. I’ve got one last question.”

  Four of six. Sixty-seven percent chance that this question would bring a silver bullet. Or one in three remaining possibilities. Thirty-three percent.

  “What do you regret?”

  It seemed an odd question, but not to someone like Harbinger. He was, above all, a creature of moral absolutes. He pondered on the answer. Nikolai Petrov had taken so many innocent lives over the decades that numbering them seemed like an impossibility. He’d committed atrocities, followed madmen, murdered, burned, tortured, destroyed, and wrecked his way across half the world. He’d fed the gulags, hammering down the nails that stuck out. He’d killed the dissidents, ripping them from their homes and leaving the half-eaten corpses in the streets as a warning to the others. A cog in the greatest death machine ever, he had lived a life free of mercy, compassion, or accountability. And most of that had been done with the full complicity of his human mind. He couldn’t even blame it on the curse.

  You named me Tvar, the word for feral beast, but which of us is the real animal?

  There was only one true answer. “I regret only one thing.…I regret meeting Lila. She showed me a world that I never belonged in. I tried, oh, how I tried for her. I am a corrupter, but I was loved by an innocent. How many like her did I hurt throughout the years? I do not know, but one, just one good person forgave me. Only…” Nikolai’s voice fell to a whisper. “Only, by becoming part of her life, I condemned her to death. It would have been better if she’d never known I existed, or perhaps it would have been better if I had never existed at all.…”

  Nikolai did not wait for Harbinger’s judgment. He pulled the trigger.

  * * *

  “I don’t know what Aksel was goin’ on about. I can read the first part, it’s about being in the war, but this…” Aino gestured at the section about the amulet. “This is mostly gibberish. The words seem made up. Maybe it’s a secret army code or something, eh?”

  A gunshot rang out. Heather looked up from her grandfather’s journal. The noise had come from inside the Alpha’s house.

  “You hear something?” Aino asked.

  “Clear as day,” she answered. It was hard to believe that he hadn’t heard that, but Heather had to remind herself: she wasn’t normal anymore. “I’ll be back.”

  Heather took her shotgun, got out of the truck, and slammed the door too hard behind her. The biting wind felt refreshing after the artificial warmth of the laboring heater. Quickly, she went up the icy steps three at a time, not even realizing that she did so. The others had to lumber along, lifting each leg high to clear enough snow to walk. Heather forced herself to slow down so as to not look suspicious.

  She found Harbinger standing in the living room, the giant skeleton looming behind him. Nikolai Petrov was still on the couch, only slouched forward, and for just a moment she thought that nothing had changed since she’d left. But the smell of exposed brains and blood told her a different story.

  How do I even know what brains smell like? Go figure. “What’re you doing?”

  Harbinger walked over to the body and picked up one of his big snub-nosed revolvers from where it had fallen on the couch. “Looking for something to write with. I told you to wait outside.”

  Blood was leaking out the side of Nikolai’s cracked skull, dripping down his face, and pooling on the carpet. She should have felt something—revulsion, maybe? But she didn’t. It was more habit than any real feeling that made her speak. “You’re a monster.”

  “Correction. Monster Hunter.” Harbinger reloaded his revolver and stuck it back under his coat. “I’m only a monster when I have to be. You got a pen?”

  * * *

  The Alpha opened his eyes. He was standing in the center of the bottom level of the Shaft Six building. The walls were covered in blood. Confused, he studied his hands. They were red up to the elbow. He looked up to see Lucinda Hood standing at the top of the catwalk, her mouth agape. It must have been bad, because it took quite a bit to shock a necromancer. “What have you done?”

  He looked down. Two of his pack were at his feet, so brutally mangled, more bone than flesh, that they were barely recognizable. The amulet burned even hotter against his chest. It had been fed. He had been fed. “It is time to free the vulkodlak,” he explained.

  The witch raised her artificial hand and covered her mouth. Her eyes were wide with fear as she nodded.

  Chapter 22

  I quit playing Nikolai’s game. We just fulfilled our missions with precision and got back out. His notes kept coming, but I ignored them. Sharon had helped me put the animal back in its place. I would not let him draw it out. We continued fighting, and we accomplished much, all without a single casualty.

  A few weeks passed with no communications left by Nikolai. Conover said intelligence from his chain of command suggested that the Russian had been called home. We were told to stand down and await further instructions.

  A week later, it was confirmed. Nikolai had returned to Moscow. President Nixon had agreed to draw down any supernatural assets in country. Apparently we weren’t alone, though we’d never met any of the other special task forces in operation. Preparations would be made. First squad would be returned to their regular units; second was going to be flown home with thanks that could never be talked about and a renewed exemption from PUFF. We celebrated.

  Nikolai hit us the next evening. Werewolves are sneaky like that. They get you when you least expect it.

  * * *

  Stark paced down the line of stacked bodies. There were far more at the hospital now than when they’d left to go for help. The senior MCB agent muttered and swore under his breath as he stepped between the heads.

  “We started it, but the other survivors have been dropping bodies off here, too,” Agent Mosher explained. “The guards posted downstairs said that the town has fortified the school and then formed patrols to fight the monsters and gather people.…Kind of like I suggested hours ago.”

  Mosher was still bitter. Stark knew that it was because he was too stupid to realize just how much trouble they were going to be in once headquarters found out just what a clusterfuck of a containment this was going to be. Stark was too old to recover from this. This line of bodies and the number of people that knew about them was a career-ending event.

  “Don’t get lippy with me, kid.” Stark stopped his pacing at the last corpse in the line. It was the body of that first infected deputy, Joe Buckley. It was uneven from the rest. Stark knelt and pulled back the sheet. Burning to death was always unpleasant. The skin was all crispy and black, except for where it had split open to expose red muscle. This one was even worse, since he was all twisted up, mostly shap
ed like a werewolf but not quite all the way there. The unevenness was caused by one hand sticking up, like it was reaching for him, claws all curled up from the heat.

  It bothered Stark quite a bit, like the stupid monster was still being defiant despite the fact that it was dead. Why wouldn’t monsters just fall into line, like everybody else? Stark stood, put his boot on the forearm and pushed down. It wouldn’t budge. Stark grunted and put more weight on it. Ash flaked off and the bones made a sick cracking noise, but the arm finally went down like it was supposed to. Stark nodded and covered the body back up. “That’s more like it,” he whispered.

  Mosher sounded worried. “Are you feeling all right, sir?”

  Stark walked away without responding. He wandered down the hallway, still muttering, bubbling with impotent rage. There was a strange noise, for just a split second. It was barely audible, kind of a hum, but then it was gone. It left his ears ringing and added to his growing headache.

  “You hear that?” Mosher asked nervously.

  “Probably nothing.” Stark ignored his partner. He found a break room with a soda machine in it. At least the generators were running here. He pulled his wallet out from under his armor and thumbed through it.

  Mosher had followed him in like a lost puppy. “Sir? What are we going to do now?”

  “I’m going to get a Dr. Pepper.…You got any dollars? All I’ve got is a twenty.”

  This was just like the Pacific Star. One helicopter load of SEALs against an ocean liner full of Deep Ones. There had been so damned many of them. They came out of the walls, through the floor, through the ceiling. They climbed up the sides to slide their slimy heads through the portholes. Every time they’d turned around there were more fish men. All but two of them had been wiped out during the first contact. The fish men had numerical superiority and fucking Dagon on their side. Magic, claws, and ancient mutants against two SEALs? What had Chief Haven expected? Of course Stark had hid.…That was the smart thing to do. Hide, and wait for reinforcements.